History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

[daft]

Did the US government treat members of it's population as guinea pigs (for the purpose of medical and other experimentation) during the cold war? Did the Soviets perform similiar experiments on their citizens?

 

[Agent327]

Yes in fact % of motorization was decreasing already since 1939 (not since 1941), because the Germans were creating new infantry divisions much faster than they were creating new motorized and armoured divisions.

I'd say the point of mechanization is to at least keep up the rate of motorization, not to decrease it.

NO army of World War II was a "mechanized juggernaut as a whole". All of them had mostly infantry + artillery.

And the German army was still more mechanized than vast majority of other armies of WW2.

But this is precisely the point that needs proving.

Maybe. But, you know, if Germans really "didn't expect" a major war before 1942, then it means that Germans were like people who are jumping from planes without parachutes and "don't expect death". Idiots.

No argument there. But to be true, when war did break out in 1939, there was no German enthusiasm for it. (Although that changed once the string of victories began.)

 

[r16]

Israel won the war of 1967 in less than 6 days so I don't think we can judge if they performed well during such a lightning-speed period.

But definitely their performance did not prolong the war by more than a couple of wars, if Israel won it in 6 days anyway.

if a pillbox keeps the enemy from advancing it has done more than it's share , pillboxes being generally avoided by enemy forces , hence being a "pointless" expenditure . Syria-in-'67 was in for the political gains and didn't expect the overwhelming Israeli success against Egypt . They tried to wiggle out and couldn't do so before Israel attacked the Golan Heights and they were like freaking winning or something before the Radio Damascus declared Kuneitra had fallen . It's not a particularly Arab thing , when panic sets everybody abandons the place ...

for the ongoing discussion , the Wehrmacht was definitely more mechanized than any of their allies , but nobody was as mechanized as the Allies ...

 

[Michkov]

I've come across this gif showing the spread of the plague in the 14th century. How did it manage to miss Cracow and the surrounding areas also Milan

 

[Domen]

How did it manage to miss Cracow and the surrounding areas also Milan

IIRC king of Poland Casimir III the Great closed the borders, to prevent the plague from spreading in his kingdom.

In Milan probably local authorities of that city-state did the same thing.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

They did.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

The Tartar Yoke was big part of the Russian national mythology. Not an expert in this matter but Russia would have developed very differently.

Definitely would have developed differently. The Tartars are probably the single most influential group in all of Russian History.

Now watch as a trained Russian Historian like wry comes in and trashes such a vastly sweeping statement.

FWIW I don't think ideology plays a particularly important role in historical development. It's mostly a convenient rhetorical excuse for actions dictated by material interest. However, one cannot doubt the effect that invasion and supplicancy has on a country and its people; if there had been no Tatar Yoke, then certainly Russia would have developed differently. But the instances where The Yoke was invoked rhetorically would simply have been justified by some other myth or excuse.

However, Mongol rule in Russia did a great deal to permanently tarnish the European image of Russia and Russians. Even today people invoke the image of The Brutal Asiatics when discussing Russia and Russians, Lenin, Stalin, Putin, etc. Although by Mongol times that was already A Thing in itself, they just used Scythians, the horse-riding nomadic steppe terrors of Antiquity, instead of the Mongols, the horse-riding nomadic steppe terrors of the Medieval world. But as I said, I think this rhetoric is mostly a disguise for vested material interests, and did very little to actually dictate the course of history or the actions of individuals; some people obviously notwithstanding.

 

[Cutlass]

Did the US compensate Japan (enough) for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Do you think any compensation is sufficient for those kinds of inhumane acts?

They started the war. We owed them no compensation.

 

[Traitorfish]

The people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki started the war?

 

[Domen]

Nuclear bombings saved some lifes as well. This guy would have killed his family and himself, if not the fact that he got wounded by both nuclear explosions (as the result, he lived to a ripe old age of 93, instead of committing Seppuku in 1945):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi

he considered killing his family with an overdose of sleeping pills in the event that Japan lost.[3]

In Nagasaki, he received treatment for his wounds, and despite being heavily bandaged, he reported for work on August 9.[3] At 11 am on August 9, Yamaguchi was describing the blast in Hiroshima to his supervisor, when the American bomber Bockscar dropped the Fat Man atomic bomb onto Nagasaki. His workplace again put him 3 km from ground zero, but this time he was unhurt by the explosion.[6] However, he was unable to seek replacement for his now ruined bandages, and he suffered from a high fever for over a week.[3]

Died: January 4, 2010 (aged 93) - Nagasaki, Japan

 

[CaptainLost]

The people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki started the war?

No. And neither did the (roughly) one million that would have died as a result of an invasion.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Nuclear bombings saved some lifes as well.

If there's a sale at a store, where everything is 1/3 off, and you buy $60 worth of stuff "to save money," you didn't save $20, you spent $40.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I would argue this isn't a history question anyway and is off topic for this thread.

 

[Traitorfish]

No. And neither did the (roughly) one million that would have died as a result of an invasion.

I've heard that, but the reasoning always turns out to be premise on a massive great heap of old-timey racism, on a simply untenable assumption that the Oriental ant-men would willingly hurl themselves and their children onto American bayonets rather than surrender. It's the sort of thing that liberals would usually be tripping over each other to expose, if only their beloved New Dealers didn't carry the blame.

 

[Cutlass]

I've heard that, but the reasoning always turns out to be premise on a massive great heap of old-timey racism, on a simply untenable assumption that the Oriental ant-men would willingly hurl themselves and their children onto American bayonets rather than surrender. It's the sort of thing that liberals would usually be tripping over each other to expose, if only their beloved New Dealers didn't carry the blame.

And if, you know, the Japanese hadn't demonstrated being that suicidal already.

 

[Traitorfish]

Look, I'm not saying that you're racist. I'm just letting the implication hang heavily in the air between us. Y'see?

 

[CaptainLost]

I would argue this isn't a history question anyway and is off topic for this thread.

'Tis a history question but it's certainly worth its own thread, so I'll make one when I have time later.

 

[jackelgull]

What I don't understand was why the US didn't just launch the bomb off to the sea near the shore of Japan. And why 2 bombs, one was enough. The Japanese government didn't even know what happened until after both bombs had been dropped and the Americans asked for their surrender.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I've heard that, but the reasoning always turns out to be premise on a massive great heap of old-timey racism, on a simply untenable assumption that the Oriental ant-men would willingly hurl themselves and their children onto American bayonets rather than surrender. It's the sort of thing that liberals would usually be tripping over each other to expose, if only their beloved New Dealers didn't carry the blame.

Don't get me wrong, I think part of the reason for the use of the Atomic Bomb went along the lines of "we built the damn thing, of course we're going to use it." Second, I think their thought process was that the American casualties would be significantly high rather than the Japanese ones (certainly they would be higher than they were when they used the atomic bomb). Through the fog of war, however, it is impossible to know what the other side is going to do. In retrospect, I think it's probably fairly likely that Japan was close to the breaking point and would have surrendered relatively easily. But, after Okinawa, I don't think an American belief to the contrary was unjustified.

'Tis a history question but it's certainly worth its own thread, so I'll make one when I have time later.

You think that "Do you think any compensation is sufficient for those kinds of inhumane acts?" is a history question? It's a normative policy question about what should be done today.

History is about understanding what happened in the past. Sure, there is a history discussion to be had about the military necessities of the atomic bomb, but not about whether there should be compensation for what happened.

 

[Mouthwash]

I've heard that, but the reasoning always turns out to be premise on a massive great heap of old-timey racism, on a simply untenable assumption that the Oriental ant-men would willingly hurl themselves and their children onto American bayonets rather than surrender. It's the sort of thing that liberals would usually be tripping over each other to expose, if only their beloved New Dealers didn't carry the blame.

Isn't this what actually happened during the island-hopping?